People we love.

A friend at church recently gave Elisa a camera and she is having a lot of fun with it.

I must say, I just love this baby. It is so much fun to have a girl after four boys in a row. Not that boys don't have their own kind of fun and sweetness, but it's different having a girl and I've forgotten how different and so it's fun to have baby girliness anew. She "chatters" all the time. It's just so cute and fun. The girls paint her toenails and it seems like she likes it, and she seems to like wearing dresses and stuff like that, even though she can't say so.  I do so enjoy my babies. What a blessing God has given my to be able to share a life with all these fun interesting young people.






Here are a couple other dear lives that the Lord brings to us.  Lately we are a "coffee stop in" for another family of boys.  Scott (the oldest) works off and on for my husband as a subcontractor (he has his own contracting company) and is finishing up college. Our house is about halfway between his school and his house and so he often stops in for a few minutes at a time to refill his cup. Sometimes he has a younger brother in tow.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a bit of a predisposition toward melancholy.  Scott is unendingly cheerful.  When he walks in he brings all the cheerful bluster and noise of young manhood.  He's so much fun to have around! And a blessing to us all as he fills the role of "big brother who has gone away to college but shows up from time to time to boss everyone else around."




Rand took some of the kids up to the mountain to play in the snow.  

Are these not a couple of the coolest guys you ever did see?






We are just oozing with coolness.
Haha, fun.  I love those silly kids.



Speaking of people we love, my middle girls got to go have a sleep over with friends. One of
the families from our church has a set of three girls that are conviniently age paired with my
three middle girls. And blessing of blessing (and perhaps miracle) they ALL get along! :) So my girls got to have a sleep over with them and do all the fun, zany things girls do, including 
making a couple movies. The one above is based on the Julian Smith video "Malk"


If you haven't discovered Julian Smith yet, you simply must. He is hilarious and talented and a home school grad to boot. :) He has lots of videos on youtube to peruse through sometime
when you need a good laugh.


Today I am feeling sick, sitting in bed. Upstairs I can here Christopher playing his sax as his brother and bride to be are moving in upstairs.
We decided to rent out our upper level just to kind of give our budget a little breathing room. 
Rand hasn't been too idle with the economy, which I'm thankful for as some people we know have been very, VERY slow, but he's had to lower his rates and the types of jobs he's been 
getting are smaller and more maintenance like, which means more time on paper work and 
less payable hours. I think it will be fun though, to have Zack and Hannah here. Hannah is a
pro gardener, so I told her she could have free rein in the yard. "I don't want to intrude" she 
says. "No,no, no, you just go right ahead!" says I. I am a terrible gardener.


Well, that's all the new that's fit to print!


By the way, on my window the words are all wonky. (splitting up at the end of a line, leaving lines blank.. wierd. ) I tried to fix it, but it isn't working and I don't know why. Hopefully it isn't that way for anyone else, but I did try to fix it!

I don't know why I just haven't been able to get into blogging lately.  I could use the excuse of time, but I know I've certainly spent enough time on facebook or looking at other peoples' blogs.  Somehow I just can't find a "skin" on this blog that I've been able to get comfortable with.  "It's Blogger!" says my HTML savvy daughter. "They've put so many widgets and stuff into it that it's hard to work with!"  Maybe that's it.  Plus the severe lack of a camera.  She set me up a site at Webs.  Which I haven't even posted at yet... Maybe it's just because I've been feeling a lot of angst and no answer for it.  Who wants to read a lot of that?  Anyway I also feel like we've been going through changes and while I try to figure them out, maybe it's better just to keep one's mouth shut.  I don't know.

Even with the slow economy and the money worries that are the constant companion of the self employed, this has been a very nice winter.  Shayleen has turned 18 and is trying to find a job, trying to find her slot in adult life.  She said it's like waiting at a highway entrance, trying to find a slot to merge into.  A pretty good analogy I think.  Forrest is 16 now.  He's full of angst a lot of the time too.  He's so much like me.  Constantly thinking too much, over analyzing, making things more difficult than they need to be, task oriented, critical, etc. etc... He's gotten into economics and thinks that will be his future path of study.  I love that my kids pick up things that I wouldn't always pick up myself.  It gives me an opportunity to learn about new stuff.  Last Sunday I came home from church and watched a documentary on Ludwig Von Mises.  Heheh.  Fun.

Shayleen continues to homeschool the girls and I school the boys.  Owen is plugging along at reading. It doesn't come easily for him.  He still turns letters around and sometimes tries to read words from the wrong end.  Noah on the other hand is about to make the leap into reading independently.  I always breath a sigh of relief when I get them to that point.  Zeke started school this year and so far he is a breeze.  He hardly turns his letters around and seems to be able to make the leap from making individual sounds to blending them together quite naturally.

If the boys do all their bookwork during the week diligently I make Fridays more fun. I read more, and we are going to do some Origami today.  No workbooks, yeah!  I guess I will just try to keep up posting here, just for myself.  I can't even claim some mom or aunt that might be interested.  Oh well.  I think I did my best blogging back at my old Homeschooler blog and I kind of miss it.  Homeschool blogger has a nice community feel, but it always seemed to have a bunch of glitches and it's hard for anyone who doesn't have an account to comment.

Off to my boys!